You think the locals are going to put a hit on Tony Martin cause he talked bad about their road? Likely to come in the form of a some dude dressed like borat waving a giant syringe. Bam! needle plunges in and 30 seconds later Tony Martin goes unconscious and rides over a cliff.

In any case, in this day and age, how do you keep a Boston marathon scenario from happening on the alpe? A thought that went through my mind with shudder the other day remembering the TT there a few years ago and the rough treatment of riders by fans. Two passes up the same mtn is a scary thought cuz fans have a chance to figure out how to get on TV if they failed the first time. We'll see. Maybe this whole thing will be fine or it could be a huge disaster.

there's a beautiful sister climb to alpe - villard reculas - that intersects via a bridge road into the village huez. problem is; it's another 5k to l'alpe d'huez, so you can't have riders climbing and descending that stretch at the same time. otherwise, they could descend via villard vs the sarenne.

as far as the 'take it easy on the descent' argument goes... last time i checked le tour was a race. it's possible that other than the lead riders the rest will be forced to descend like cement due to the technical, narrow nature of the road. guess we'll find out.

come to think of it, if i were prudhomme, i would have taken the race to the village huez, descended the fine villard road (D211B to D448) to D526 to D1091 and back to D211 and all the way up the second time. would allow plenty of time to clear the course, descend an excellent road, and build anticipation for the full flight to the top.

Why not just stay out of the mountains and do flat stages as that is safer. Oops, lots of crashes. Perhaps only time trials like they used to. Oops, Schlek may have issues, but at least the chicken is not racing.
Descents are only as dangerous as you make them. Martin is no GC contender so he will probably be dropped and can take it slow anyhow.